Writings & Musings

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As promised, I have an excerpt from Welcome to the Grave. But, first, I wanted to give a bit of background to what any of this is about. So far, it’s about a company of reapers. This corporate job of reaping has just about the same prestige and sex appeal as the ad men of the 50’s (at least, I hope it does). This is the fourth draft, so while there is still some work ahead of me, I wanted to put something out there. I gave a bit of a background about where the main character works, but it’s all still in the works regarding the overarching plot and sub-characters. This is also a new style of writing for me since I normally delve into detailed prose and heavy themes. But, I’m trying my hand at something more satirical.

“It’s like…how our freedom as individuals is trapped in books…it’s like we’re trapped by the education system…”

“Woah this canvas is huge.” I’m aware. The best part about it was lugging it up four flights of stairs every Monday morning.

“Monica, why do you keep drawing people with animal heads?”

“AGAIN?”

“Oh I love Pans Labyrinth.”

“Well this is unnerving…”

“Fingers crossed…but for what?” Life, man. Life.

I keep thinking to myself that I need to upload some of my artwork, because I have a ton of it stored away in closets around the house, and half of it is hanging on the walls in various rooms. Most of these pieces I did for my AP Drawing portfolio during my senior year at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy. I can’t remember exactly what I named my concentration, but I know it was something along the lines of Nightmares because I thought that would give me a lot of room to work with. The best and worst part about submitting a portfolio is naming all the pieces something accurate to what is presented to the judges while also maintaining a certain amount of professionalism and the tiniest hint of bullshit. Instead of renaming all of these I thought it would be more fun if I named them after reactions people had/things that I distinctly remember people telling me about each of them.

Hi, hello, no, stop – stop. There’s no need for all of that (Please!). I started a separate blog a few years ago, but I think it was becoming less of a portfolio and more of a diary of sorts full of a lot of anger, anxiety and whatever else is currently brewing in the pits of my stomach. Either way, here we are. You, me, and this brightly lit screen between us. The romance is something out of a Katherine Heigl movie, preferably with more comedy, less crying, and that girl from The Ring crawling out the television and ruining the carpet. My kind of Saturday night. So, as of right now, I’m going to be posting like crazy some of the pieces I’ve written over the past few years just to update and convince you people that I definitely have work! I promise! It’s just all on my laptop and buried in about ten folders which I keep meaning to sort through (Does anyone else have a problem with naming things by smashing your hands on the keyboard, or is that just me?). Oh, and the title of the place – believe me, it’s not some kind of twisted joke on my own mortality, but a thing (honestly, there’s no better word for this, I went on Thesaurus) I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks. I’m trying my hand at magical realism that’s drenched with sarcasm, much like myself. Here’s an excerpt:

“So, what is this?”

That’s right. What really is this? That’s the kind of hard hitting questions this book (yikes, I’ve committed now) is going to be asking. I’m two steps away from a protagonist in an existential crisis and three from a love triangle involving a theater geek who’s had enough (Enough of what?) and possibly another girl who keeps to the shadows and only wears neon orange pants. I’m thinking they’ll meet by making eye contact in that slit that all public bathroom stalls seem to have while one of them is washing their hands. In reality though, it’s actually about reapers and it may take place in New York. I’ll post an excerpt soon.

If you stick around, thanks I appreciate it. If not, I hope you get really obsessed with anime and all your friends make fun of you…not that I would know anything about that though.